642 / Theatre Journal TORNADO SEASON. by Emily K. Harrison
642 / Theatre Journal TORNADO SEASON. By Emily K. Harrison. Directed by Charlotte Brecht Munn. square product theatre, ATLAS Center for the Performing Arts, Boulder, CO. 20 March 2009. Increasingly, solo performance and other live pro- ductions use media as a kind of “fifth wall.” Tornado Season, a solo piece written and performed by Em- ily Harrison, is a multimedia memoir that parallels the internal tornados of her adult life with the very real and terrifying tornados that frequent the place of her birth: the pine trees and oil fields of East Emily K. Harrison in Tornado Season. Texas. Through the use of innovative streaming (Photo: Marcin Mroz.) video, live sound design, and a moving script, the piece transported the audience to a place of striking contradictions, where the West meets the South, the Pure Data in order to trigger sound events within Bible Belt meets tornado alley, frightening snakes those parameters (such as the sound simulations of fill the beautiful Red River, an abundance of crystal tornados that he found and created). Harrison react- meth pollutes the endless blue sky, and debutantes ed onstage to the unpredictable sounds, obviously mingle with cowboys. The protagonist is trapped aware that the sounds that were to come would be in a world where death and destruction are loom- big though unsure in what direction they would ing, either from floods from the south, fires from move. Sinkinson used a broad spectrum of sound: the west, or the unpredictable and indiscriminate just as the thunderous arrival of a tornado jolted course of tornados. She illustrates her fears from her the audience and Harrison, the opposite reaction own perspective as a young girl through that of an was generated by the calming, almost impercepti- adult when she escaped from East Texas.
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